


Vinny in the playoffs!

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Vinny gets a life [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3859612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By this point Vinny's got a playoff beard, but it's kind of sad. He's mostly got moustache, which makes him look like a villain. Anton's is better, and considering he's blond and it has a bit of ginger in it, that's sad. Thomas is comforted by the fact that at least Lapointe's is worse than his. Lapointe’s just got facial fuzz. At least Thomas looks evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vinny in the playoffs!

Being the back-up in a playoffs situation is both the easiest and the hardest job in the world. Easiest, because he has absolutely no impact on the final score. Hardest, for the exact same reason. It’s a role he’s also gotten fairly used to since coming up to the Habs.

Fournier starts it, obviously, but when game three rolls around he’s less than .900, and the Habs are in a two game hole, because no one had the firing capacity to overcome it. Game three starts ugly and gets worse, and at the end of the first the Habs are down 3-0, Fournier currently a sparkling .600 in the game. Thomas starts to wonder. 

Fournier’s not looking at anyone during intermission, looks up sharply when his elbow is nudged and only relaxes when he sees it’s Thomas. “Gagnon’s going to put you in,” he says. “They think I’m rattled.”

“You’re fine,” Thomas says.

Fourns looks rattled, and sounds it too, Thomas knows it well enough from experience. They’re on home-ice, and you could hear a pin drop by the end of the first, except when the Nordiques fans leapt up at the buzzer beater to close the period.

“Vincent,” he hears from Gagnon, and Fournier raises an exhausted but still sardonic eyebrow. Thomas gets up, follows Gagnon out of the room.

“Next period I want you in,” Gagnon says. 

Point taken, Michel Fournier, point taken.

For a split second, Thomas wonders if ‘thanks but no thanks’ is an acceptable answer. It probably is not.

“Yeah, let me go get ready,” Thomas says.

Anton’s lurking suspiciously close when Thomas returns, closes in on him. “You in?” he asks, low.

“I’m going to throw up,” Thomas says.

“Better do it fast, you’ve got like five minutes left until you’re on the ice,” Anton says, because he is a dick.

Thomas gives him the finger and goes to hide in the goalie nook. Even Fournier’s tragic face isn’t enough to make him hesitate. 

It’s hard to come back from a three goal lead. Harder when your team can’t score, but he isn’t blaming them -- the shots on net are coming, he’s mostly watching the action from the other end, but Primrose is holding on, and they get one past him, but the Nordiques find the back of the net too, and it’s 4-1 when they trudge off the ice, a quiet Bell Centre around them, a quiet room.

Thomas wins game four by the skin of his teeth -- Lapointe scores in the final two minutes and Thomas hugs him with quiet gratitude at the end of the game, because a sweep probably would have broken him and Fournier both. Sure, the rest of the room would have hurt a little, but Thomas is still nauseated by the thought of it, even when the game is settled.

Game five is another close win, this time Quebecor dead silent around them, and they go home for game six. Thomas hasn’t lost the nausea from game four, it’s just kept growing until it reached overwhelming. They’ve lost three, and if Thomas falters, they’re out. That’s been the truth of the last two games, but now it feels urgent, because he has hope.

Unrelatedly, by this point Vinny's got a playoff beard, but it's kind of sad. He's mostly got moustache, which makes him look like a villain. Anton's is better, and considering he's blond and it has a bit of ginger in it, that's sad. Thomas is comforted by the fact that at least Lapointe's is worse than his. Lapointe’s just got facial fuzz. At least Thomas looks evil. 

Game six is 4-1 Nordiques when the siren blares, and Thomas has no idea how he manages to muster a smile in the handshake line. Fournier spends a good two minutes sitting very close to him -- Thomas thinks the technical definition is cuddling -- and Thomas clings back just as hard, because it was his, and he lost it, but they both lost this.

Anton finds him after, when he’s showered and changed. Thomas no longer feels nauseated, just empty. Fournier ducked out the first chance he got, but Thomas doesn’t want to leave. Every season, he’s never sure if the end of the season is his last day in this room, with these people. 

Anton sits in Fournier’s spot. “Fourns would kill you,” Thomas tells him tiredly.

“No one’s telling him,” Anton says. “Moral support?”

“Not here,” Thomas says, because he is not responsible for his actions if he gets hugged, up to and including crying, and that’s not something he wants to spring on everyone. Hell, there’s still media in the room. Lapointe is mid-interview, tiny and vicious looking. Thomas has pretty much put a forcefield around himself, and the forwards had taken the brunt of it for him, but he’ll have to face the media tomorrow. 

“Mine?” Anton asks, and Thomas nods, lets Anton drive him home, where they are drawn to his couch like magnets and Anton flips through channels idly until he finds a Mythbusters episode. “Cool?” he asks, and Thomas nods and takes that as permission to collapse on him.

“We let you down,” Anton says quietly.

“You blocked half the shit coming at me,” Thomas says.

“You played fucking awesome,” Anton says into his hair, and Thomas squeezes his eyes shut. “Vinny, fuck, you were so great.”

“Stop,” Thomas says.

“You were,” Anton says. “Fournier was the one --”

“Shut the fuck up,” Thomas says, because that shit can be thought, but never spoken. That’s an unspoken rule, and he’s appreciated it nights when he knows he lost it for all of them. The media always have more than enough to say about it, the last thing anyone needs is to hear it from the room, even when you know they’re thinking it. 

“Sorry,” Anton murmurs, and squeezes his shoulder. “You want a beer?”

“Moral support,” Thomas counters, and Anton drops his hand, heavy, between Thomas’ shoulderblades, keeps it there until Thomas feels a little more like he can breathe. “Kay, I’ll take that beer now,” Thomas decides.

“You have to get off me first,” Anton says mildly.

Thomas doesn’t want to. “Never mind,” he says, and Anton snorts, but not judgmentally.

He sleeps in Anton’s guest room that night. They’ve got to deal with locker clean out, and the media, and Thomas suspects not only would the media notice if he was wearing yesterday’s suit -- or one of Anton’s, which he’d drown in -- but they’d probably make a stink, so Anton drops him off with time enough for him to change and make his hair lie flat with way too much gel.

Media day is awful. He knows the media’s going relatively easy on him, because he went into a near impossible situation, and no one’s surprised he failed at it, but he did fail. They’re harder on Fournier, and he’s grim when they’re cleaning out their shit, barely responds to Thomas’ hip bump.

Anton got away from the press early, because he’s one of the few guys who played pretty faultlessly, so he’s packed and ready while Thomas cleans out his space. He carefully detaches the poster of Fournier with a heart drawn around his mask. He thinks Fournier’s the one who put it there, but no guarantees. He’s keeping it anyway.

Anton lurks behind him, which Thomas is used to. Anton’s just the lurky kind of person, and he uses the two inches he has on Thomas way too effectively. 

“You coming to Sudbury this summer?” Thomas asks, smoothing out the poster.

Anton makes a face, blink and you’d miss it. 

“I could come to Hartford again,” Thomas says. “Your parents wouldn’t mind, right?”

“Uncool,” Anton says under his breath. 

Thomas beams at him.

“Yeah,” Anton says, ruffling a hand through Thomas’ hair. “Sudbury. Show me all the cool sights?”

“You’re planning to stay the whole summer?” Thomas asks.

Anton snorts, shoving Thomas lightly. “Whatever, loser.” He wanders off.

Fournier pauses his own clean up. “Seriously,” he says, “He’s never that nice to anyone but you. What do you _do_?”

Anton literally just called him a loser, but Thomas doesn’t mention that, because he kind of knows what Fournier means. “I’m just more charming than you,” he says, and maturely ignores Fournier’s snort.


End file.
